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"I follow the course of my dreams, making them images into steps toward other images; folding casual metaphors like fans into grand pictures of interior vision; I untie life from myself, and I toss it aside as if it were a too-tight suit."- Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

You know a writer is great when he makes you want to learn a new language to understand his work in the original. "The Book of Disquiet" is easily the best book I've read this year, and possibly the one I've copied the most quotes from. I'd only ever read Pessoa's poetry and I had no idea what to expect from his prose. It turns out he does poetry and prose equally well.

I would love to have a conversation with Pessoa, although I would probably be an annoyance to him with his desire for solitude. But having a deep, philosophical conversation with him would be like a dream. He has such fascinating thoughts! He delves into the complexity of humans and helped me to understand the reason for his several heteronyms in his poetry:

"Each of us is various, many people, a prolixity of selves."

I feel that this is the sort of book that people will either think is brilliant or they will think Pessoa is too sentimental and sensitive. I have to say that I rarely come across a writer who thinks so deeply and obsessively about certain things. Pessoa's favourite topics seem to be dreams, solitude, writing, the futility of life (was he an existentialist? He reminds me a bit of Meursault). I may share Pessoa's melancholy to some extent but I don't share his negative outlook, his depression and his misanthropic nature! Even so, this was a brilliant book and one I'm so glad I finally read.

Pessoa's writing really consumed me at times. Definitely a book to be savoured, and a candidate for a re-read.

"When I write, I visit myself solemnly. I have special rooms, remembered by someone else in the interstices of my self-representation, where I take pleasure in analyzing what I do not feel, and I examine myself as if I were a painting in the shadows."